Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
They made money because most of the companies didn't fail (over 3/4ths didn't). So on total, they made more money than they lost because on total they saved more companies than they didn't.]
You seem pretty confident in this.
Please list every company Bain invested in and their +/- for each.
You
do have that info, right? To back your statement up?
Huh? No. I don't. But neither do those who are repeating claims that Bain somehow deliberately caused companies to fail in order to somehow make a profit in some undefined manner. Um... But it's not like the broad strokes aren't
readily available to anyone who bothers to do the tiniest bit of research instead of just repeating what they heard.
22% of the companies they invested in failed at some point after Bain got involved. 8% failed completely, causing Bain to lost its entire investment.
Most of the companies Bain made money off were turned around and became successful. And among those which accounted for the greatest amount of dollar profits most of those remained successful even after Bain stopped managing them. Less than half failed later anyway, but *after* Bain was no longer involved with them. We can speculate that Bain somehow sabotaged them and got out before the collapse happened, but we could equally speculate that those companies were successful while Bain was managing them, and then after selling the investment off (at a profit) to someone else, that other person made changes which were stupid and caused them to fail.
The point being that they were in the business of investing in risky ventures which appeared to be failing. This meant that some of the companies failed anyway. But some of those they turned around made big money for them. Enough to more than offset the losses.
Basically, I see nothing wrong with what this company did. And frankly, it's a great analogy for exactly the sort of fiscal action which voters have been clamoring for. They want a government that will make those hard choices. One that will cut programs, even if they are popular (or strongly protected by those who want them to continue), because they are not cost effective. Everyone who argues that extending unemployment is a bad idea is making a case for exactly the sort of methods Bain Capital used. Everyone who argues that it's wrong to raise taxes on the productive parts of the economy to make up the gap in costs needed to provide benefits for the unproductive parts is also making that same case. What do you think Bain did? They made the hard choice to cut things which weren't necessary to economic success. And in most cases, it worked.
Isn't that *exactly* what many people (especially those on the right) have been demanding? Again, anyone who opposes big government spending as a solution to an economic downturn is effectively arguing for the same methods that Bain used in the private sector. It's the same philosophy at work. And while it's easy to use rhetoric to make it sound "mean" or "hurtful", the reality is that it's what is needed for us to turn this economy around, just as those methods were needed to turn those companies around.